Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday February 15, 1999 @11:37AM
from the fantasy-becoming-fact? dept.

An anonymous reader sent us a link to a PCWeek
Article where you can read about
IBM and Linux.
They supposedly are going to announce Linux based Netfinity
boxes at LinuxWorld. Says they'll support Red Hat, Caldera,
SuSE, and might even be releasing their own version for the
high end mega boxes.

I wonder if IBM plans to offer Linux as an option on it's PC's... It would be nice to be able to buy a desktop system with KDE or Gnome, and it would definitely help to give Linux a more stable footing in the desktop market. - Adam Schumacher

Having worked at IBM (on contract) a few months ago, I'm surprised it wasn't on the list. The IBMers I worked with that used Linux ran either

1) LinuxPPC 2) Debian, or 3) RedHat.

Of the two x86 distros, the feeling was that RedHat was for ordinary joes who wouldn't ask much from the system, and Debian was/is for people who want to make the system do backflips. Of course LinuxPPC had its own crowd.

No skin off my back though -- it would be amazing if someone working on Debian didn't already run it on a Netfinity 7000 or similar. They're great machines, the kind you'd expect a Debian maintainer to be working with;-). Heheh...

(still waiting for my copy of Solaris 7 to show up so as to run Coda on Debian, Solaris, NT, and FreeBSD boxes)

That makes me wonder -- how is IBM going to respond to Coda, seeing as to how when Coda matures it will be a Better DFS?!? That may be the really interesting question... several of the Coda clients have BSD-style licenses.

I'm just wondering, does anybody have opinions as to the future of AIX?

AIX has a small piece of the UNIX market, but it's secure because it's tied to IBM hardware. Same situation with HP-UX and Digital Unix.

SCO, on the other hand, is probably in trouble, despite the fact that they own the UNIX brand and have a big chunk of the market. I can't think of a compeling reason for anyone to switch to SCO, and there are reasons for their existing customers to go elsewhere.

Irix is probably in trouble too. If the MIPS architecture tanks, then Irix will go with it.

It's also well known that IBM has ported Solaris 7 over to the RS6000. From what I heard, when they did the initial release of AIX they dicked with 95% of the code and made it run poorly. Sun came to the rescue, but I don't think we'll ever see a real union and a chance of getting Solaris 7 on a RS6000 to us consumer types - although the idea of Solaris on a PPC box would be kick-ass.

Technique #12: Prop up unknown 'experts'. Call up your brother-in-law's college roommate and ask him what he thinks of this dumb release you gotta write a article about, so you can get back to playing solitaire.

Actually, there are people at ZD who know how to do research. The problem seems that the editorial level there doesn't know the difference between journalism and 'winging it'.

>Server vendors to date have announced support >mainly for Red Hat Linux, which became one of >the most widely used versions of Linux last year >after Red Hat Software received ample funding >from Intel Corp.

Not that it's a big deal, but why does PC Week seem to assume a causal relationship between Intel's money and Redhat's popularity amongst distributions. Redhat has been the most popular linux distribution for several years now, since right around when 4.0 came out (I'm guestimating time, but still). Intel's money, though I'm happy they Redhat got it, has little if anything to do with Redhat's popularity when compared to other distribs. *sigh* factual errors, I guess we learn to live with them.

I've only been using AIX for 6 months now, off and on, and maybe once or twice a month have to configure things. They are sufficiently different from othe *nix that I like to use SMIT to show me what the command is.

Interesting points made in that article about Linux diversity. Is it good that there are several major distributions of Linux that are market dominating, or is it a problem? How will traditional businesses thread through the Linux community?

The industry analyst who thought that putting focus one more than one distribution was bad for the market came by this strange view by considering Linux as a brand. Since Linux does not represent a single commercial force, it patently doesn't deserve such a comparison. It would also be a mistake to believe that if you took all the market share of commercial Linux distributions together that it would represent a smaller share than if the various distributions were to unify. Simply, if Linux gains commonplace desktop acceptance, it will be because it has been made both easy enough and useful for the typical computer user. If that comes from one distribution or a dozen, the growth will be pretty similar. Furthermore, there will always be room for many niche distributions. None of this weakens Linux, it strengthens it.

Since IBM woke up to the Internet, it's been recruiting the sort of people who run Linux at home, who write it. There's a lot of Linux talent in IBM today, and it's no surprise that the journos are getting a whiff of marketed Linux systems. After all, within IBM, there's already plenty of support (and therefore patentable code that runs on Linux).

"This is how you ruin Linux," said Kimball Brown, an analyst at Dataquest Inc., in San Jose, Calif. "I think what Intel is doing is right--investing in one version of Linux. The more you support all the versions, the more of a mess it becomes."

I have to say that this is the first time I've heard someone who wasn't a slashdot nazi advocate the One True Distribution theory. Somebody out there must be paying Dataquest for advice like this. Glad it's not me.

We just got a new Netfinity. Died less than 24 hours after firing it up for a burn in. A week later and STILL waiting for a resolution. Not the best service record I've seen by far. And since this problem *appears* to be hardware related, I can only imagine what'd be in store for any Linux/Netfinity combo. At least the boxes LOOK nice, albeit an expensive doorstop for our server room.:) ------------------------------------------------ -

Hooray for variety. If people know they're going to have to expect their code to work on a variety of platforms with a variety of processors, then they take a bit more care with their code - or should.

This makes for less hassle when you upgrade and no doubt improves code robistness.

but..if Microsoft jumps on the Linux bandwagon......then Linux will cost 300 dollars!! and Bill Gates (i know he's listening) will send some freaky secret service guys out to bump off Linus, and THEN where would we be??